


I’ll take my heart clean apart if it helps yours to beat

by icanthelpbut_love_you



Series: without any strings attached [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Episode: s03e18 The Beast Within, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, POV Alec Lightwood, i hate that i have to tag it with that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 17:32:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18503731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icanthelpbut_love_you/pseuds/icanthelpbut_love_you
Summary: He almost welcomes the pain. Old habits die hard in all their comforting familiarity, and the lances of red-hot agony are his penance even if they do not come anywhere near close to what he deserves.“Forgive me,” he wants to beg.Asmodeus’ bargain is cruel in the way only a Prince of Hell can be, and Alec is burning up from the inside.





	I’ll take my heart clean apart if it helps yours to beat

**Author's Note:**

> Look, sometimes when there's this much angst happening, you just have to wallow in it for a while. This is that wallowing.  
> Set between one moment and the next during Alec's (rather brutal) break-up speech.
> 
> Title is from ‘Atlas: Two’ by Sleeping at Last

“How is that going to fix anything.”

Magnus practically spits the words out, angry in the way he gets when he’s trying to throw up his defences. Alec recognises it all too well. It’s the same bitterness he threw at Lorenzo in the aftermath of losing his magic for the second time, refusing to waver in the presence of an enemy. It’s the same defiance he’d drawn on against Maryse at Alec’s doomed wedding all those months ago, unfaltering and proud even as he’d bared his heart in the face of almost-certain rejection.

But this time it’s directed at Alec – where he is normally the one slowly chipping away Magnus’ walls and making sure he feels safe enough to start bringing them down on his own, now he’s the reason they’re going up. And he hates it. But it’s not the anger that knocks the breath from his lungs and stops him before he can get out another word.

It’s the pain. The raw vulnerability and distress in Magnus’ eyes that he can’t quite manage to hide. It pins him down, makes him unable to break eye contact even if he wanted to, choking him as surely as if there were real hands around his throat cutting off the air and stifling his voice.

“It will!” he wants to say, wants to yell. More than anything else he wants to lunge forwards and wrap Magnus in his arms so he can confess what’s at stake.

The deal is not fair in the slightest. Not that he expected a deal with a Greater Demon (and a Prince of Hell at that) to be anything other than shockingly ruthless, but this was so utterly unexpected that he’d had nothing to fall back on. It’s somehow both so petty he wants to scoff and so earth-shatteringly devastating that he’s seconds away from tears, and it makes his head spin with both rage and grief if he thinks about it too long. But he’s seen what Magnus has been like these last few weeks, untethered and mourning and hurting beyond anything Alec can imagine. Even if they’d both tried to pretend everything was fine. Magnus has been toeing a line of self-destruction and after last night it’s not something they can ignore anymore, no matter how much Magnus seems to want to. So if this is the price he has to pay to fix things, by the angel he will pay it.

“You’ll be ok,” he wants to whisper, to murmur against Magnus’ lips, to implore him to see that Alec’s just not worth it.

He meant what he said to Izzy: Magnus will love again. That much hasn’t changed, it’s only a matter of when: a few months (years? weeks? how long does it take for an immortal with centuries of experience to recover from heartbreak?) from now compared to a few decades when Alec is long gone. Neither resentment or jealousy make him say that (not anymore). Just simple certainty that as much as he could never doubt Magnus’ love for him, Alec is temporary. Knowing that and knowing the unquantifiable importance of Magnus’ magic... it’s no choice at all really.

“I love you,” he wants to cry, “I will never stop loving you.”

As if he ever could. Alec doesn’t know whether there’s truth to the old shadowhunter wives’ tale or that’s just how he is. He just knows deep in his bones that as long as he lives he will never recover from Magnus Bane. Not when he can viscerally feel his heart tearing itself to shreds in his chest, feel it rend inch by intensely-painful inch for every moment he stops himself from taking it all back and falling to Magnus’ side, his body physically revolting at the idea of hurting Magnus regardless of the rationale his mind continues to provide.

He almost welcomes the pain. Old habits die hard in all their comforting familiarity, and the lances of red-hot agony are his penance even if they don't come anywhere near close to what he deserves.

“Forgive me,” he wants to beg.

But he can’t.

He has no right to. The snide voice in his head sound suspiciously like Asmodeus. The hands around Alec’s throat may as well be his too, tightening with every instant he remains frozen looking into the distraught eyes of the love of his life.

Asmodeus was right. That’s possibly the worst part of all of this. Weak is not a word he could ever dream of using to describe Magnus. Magnus, who is strong, brilliant, generous to the point of being self-sacrificing, everything Alec implored him to see and a million things he didn’t get a chance to say. But the undeniable truth is that Alec makes him vulnerable. That without his feelings for Alec no force in the universe could have compelled him to give up his magic. And god, the implications of that…

Without Alec, Magnus would still have his magic. He’d still have his immortality, his job, his home, his _soul_. The guilt, kept as almost-manageable embers for so long by pure force of will, catches alight. It sends tongues of flame searing through him, blistering under his skin and stinging against his eyes, even though this is not the time, this is not about him, he has no right to lose control now. Waves of vicious heat threaten to overwhelm him and he feels as fragile as glass, liable to blow out at any moment into millions of razor shards and cut them both to pieces.

The guilt burns and burns. Magnus’ confessions and Asmodeus’ taunts melt together and coat his thoughts with molten rivers of equal parts self-loathing and desperation.

He can’t breathe.

Magnus’ eyes bore right into his soul, begging and judging and condemning all at once. A part of him deep inside that can afford to be selfish hopes they see right through him. It’s not fair of him to expect that of Magnus though, not with everything that’s happened and not with what Alec’ doing to him now.

The flames rise until they become an inferno, heat reaching a crescendo as it roars through him, and all at once he shatters.

He looks away.

It shouldn’t be a relief.

“There is no fixing this.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come and yell with me on tumblr (@icanthelpbut-love-you)


End file.
